Linux As a Model For a New Government? 509
An anonymous reader writes "The hedge fund investor who prided himself on achieving 1000% returns, Andrew Lahde, wrote a goodbye letter to mark his departure from the financial world. In it, he suggests people think about building a new government model, and his suggestion is to have someone like George Soros fund a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds in a manner where they're not tempted by bribery. In doing so, he refers to how Linux grows and competes with Microsoft. An open source government. How would such a system work, and could it succeed? How long before it became corrupt? Would it need a benevolent dictator (Linus vs. Soros)?"
How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
How long does it take to make a phone call?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia has proven time and time again that "openness" will be corrupted just as easily as anything else.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:4, Insightful)
It didn't work in 1861, why should it work now?
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It didn't work in 1861, why should it work now?
Unfortunately in our system of government, Congress can vote themselves pay raises, and they are allowed to get money from people and companies to fund their campaigns, etc...
If congress members earned as much as the one guy they hire to work at the DMV in a city of a million people, things would be different. People wouldn't be there for the money and greed.
Of course the citizens being armed and able to overthrow the government when enough citizens get pissed would also help...
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While this sounds funny, it isn't really all that unusual... or even an original thought other than rephrasing the idea into modern engineering terms.
The American republic pretty much was an attempt to fork the English government into a new rev.... which even the English government by the 1770's had gone through several revision cycles and a couple "forks" of its own as well with a couple of revolutions and some knights and noblemen who tended (in England) to tell the King off from time to time. Very few E
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
False!
Wikipedia is a lot of thing, but its governance is not open.
As they say themselves, they are "not an experience in democracy", which in my opinion is the source of all the scandals we've seen lately.
Disagree on the philosophy of Wikipedia? You've got to fight the delete wars.
Disagree with an admin decision on a delete war? You're out of luck.
You're not an admin, so you can only try to convince him when he'll "decide on what the consensus is".
Disagree with Jumbo Wales on anything? You're out. Not only out of luck, but out of Wikipedia, too. Along with your whole IP range, probably.
On the other hand, slashdot would probably be a pretty good model for democracy (when the admins will lose the veto power on what makes first page, at least).
And for those who complain about the noise to signal ratio here? That's democracy for you, guys. Go back to microsoft's forum about microsoft; I heard they make the trains arrive on time.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Informative)
'...have someone like George Soros fund a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds in a manner where they're not tempted by bribery.'
This is an old idea, of course, most recently known as 'meritocracy', a term that many people are unaware was originally intended to be pejorative. Here's what Michael Young (who coined the term in the 50s) had to say about this type of system in business and politics back in 2001, well before the current economic mess:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment [guardian.co.uk]
'The business meritocracy is in vogue. If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited.'
My point was... (Score:3, Insightful)
Government follows money.
What allows government to be large, centralised and corrupted?
"It's The Money Stupid".
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux works because if you don't like what Linus is doing you can fork it, or use one of the BSDs, or start your own operating system.
For example when people didn't like what Xfree86 was doing, they forked the code to x.org, and now that's what most people use.
It isn't so easy to fork your government if you don't like what they are doing.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Informative)
Because communism has nothing to do with openness.
Quite the contrary, virtually all communist systems (there are many flavours) of past and present are particularly jealous of interference, be it from the inside or outside and it is probably one of the most conservative systems around.
I therefore suggest you start reading up on the subject before you fuck up during a next election.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:5, Insightful)
No implemented perpetuum mobile in existance was close to what self sustained energy source really means. If you're an idealist, a perpetuum mobile is still the best energy source out there, in theory. Unfortunately, it's the hardest to implement in practice.
Marxism is not ideal (Score:5, Insightful)
Marxism is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ideal governmental model. It is human nature to want to work for your reward, and to appreciate only things that you've worked for.
Marxism takes this and turns it on it's head. It claims that you should hate work, but that you should do it for the "common good" and that people should have their needs met by society even if they are unable to work.
The only thing I can think of that's more degrading than working for nothing is being paid for nothing. In Marxism, you can only get something by needing it, and no matter how hard you work you can never earn anything. The whole thing is disgusting and degrading on a fundamental level.
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I don't recall who said it first, but to paraphrase somebody:
"From each according to his ability and to each according to his need" defines a system that rewards need and punishes ability.
Ayn Rand (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds like an Ayn Rand quote to me (I'm pretty sure I read it in Atlas Shrugged), though I'm sure she wasn't the first to say it.
That's a good practical argument, but it's not an idealist's argument. The problem with Marxism is more fundamental than that. It demands that people be something they are not.
I like to work, because I get what I want from it. But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life. It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
Re:Ayn Rand (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to work, because I get what I want from it.
Psychologists have found that we are at our happiest when working on something that is at our correct level of challenge (not overwhelming or tedious). Actually, video games are this theory in practice.
Most people today distinguish work and play, but they are truly the same thing. The only difference is usually that someone has told you to do "work" and you have chosen to do your hobby (or "play") yourself.
But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life.
Most people we consider "geniuses" worked on things because they found it interesting. They often also used it to make a living. But once their basic needs were met, their goal was to continue the work that interested them. It's not self loathing. It's often self love and love to improve yourself and things.
It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
No, it's not "bad". But psychology has shown, time and time again, that once your needs are met, you will be happier if you are working on things that develop you or are part of a cause you believe in. It brings people a satisfied life, where they are happy with themselves and generally happy overall. If you work for material things, you get spikes of happiness followed by low plains of being unsatisfied, bored, frustrated because you want something else, etc.
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You mistakenly believe that the fruits of your labour are going to the poor. But by and large, they're not. The poor in North America are getting poorer all the time. For the most part, the fruits of your labour that are taken from you are going to the super-rich, and their share gets bigger every day. Why should the value of your labour go into Warren Buffet's pocket? or Soros'? or any other multi-billionaire?
The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very littl
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"So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator"."
Soros and buffet are nowhere near in the same league, I've met Mr Soros personally and I can tell you he is not in the same league as your typical billionaire in the slightest. He set up conferences in how the political process of america is manipula
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"This is the same Soros that is funding Moveon.org, hates Bush and his allies with a passion and has funded the democrats before this election to the tune of at least $20-30 million dollars?"
And what was the context of his support? Did you ask or even read about why he did such things? Just saying "he gave money to so and so" without any kind of context on why he did what he did is meaningless ideological smear tactics.
"We're supposed to trust Mr Liberal, there? No thanks."
Again, this betrays any insight
Re: what really happened with the Baht (Score:4, Interesting)
Note: This is what really happened with the baht
Soros was also making contacts for a ceasefire deal through JP Morgan.
He was losing money on his short-term positions, which were not covered, but subsequently would make money on his medium-term positions. In general he was not in big trouble, unlike other speculators who had attacked the baht in the spot market and were trapped in the guillotine of the two-tier currency system. (The two-tier system made it impossible for speculators to attack the baht from offshore.)
Soros' position was largely medium-term, which would be matured in six months. That was the big chunk of the attack. Rerngchai realised that come August, the Bank of Thailand would not have the dollars on hand to deliver to the speculators, as obligated by the currency swaps.
But Soros also realised that the carry-over, or interest, cost of his baht positions would not be worthwhile due to the abnormally high interest rates on the baht.
Rerngchai reached a broad agreement with his aides that the Bank of Thailand would settle only half of its US$14.8 billion in offshore swap positions, which confronted the speculators face to face.
Paiboon Kittisrikangwarn, then the central bank's chief trader, received several phone calls from speculators through local banks asking for a truce. But his reaction was stern. He would not meet the speculators, but he agreed to cut a deal at an exchange rate of Bt23 to the dollar or the forward rate of 9 per cent.
"Take it or leave it," he said.
The speculators wanted Bt26, meaning that the deal would have left them with a loss of Bt3 for every dollar. The speculators were fuming with rage.
It was evident that strong political backup was necessary if this mission was to be successful. When Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, then prime minister, was informed about this plan to talk it out with Soros, Chavalit agreed.
His tone was conciliatory. "It's alright. Let's do it. I am ready to help," he said.
But the political situation at that time was highly precarious. Engaging in this kind of clandestine operation required a stable administration; otherwise, the slightest jab by the opposition could bring down the government. In the meantime, rumours of ceasefire negotiations with Soros quickly became widespread.
Euromoney wrote in its September 1997 issue: "Undeterred by the freeze, those who needed baht offshore to cover short positions became more inventive. One particular exposed speculator - local gossip-mongers reckon it was George Soros - went cap in hand to the central bank to ask for baht and offered to play the bank's game in return by easing off hammering the currency. The Bank of Thailand declined the offer."
In the end, negotiations with Soros would never take place because the finance minister lacked the political back up. Amnuay was about to fall victim to coalition politics, engineered by the Chat Pattana, which wanted to take over economic management from the New Aspiration Party.
In early June Arminio Fraga, a former deputy governor of the central bank of Brazil, who worked for Soros, contacted the Bank of Thailand to cut a deal. Fraga, who would be appointed his country's central bank governor a year later to save the Brazilian real, was then the managing director of Soros Fund Management.
Fraga, who frequently visited Bangkok to investigate the business climate, came over to talk about the possibility of ending the baht war.
But after Amnuay's resignation in late June, he sensed victory. When one of the central bank officials tried to call him to reach a settlement, he said: "I think we can wait a little bit more".
With that sentence ringing in his ear, Rerngchai realised that the Bank of Thailand was about to lose the currency war.
Right-Wing Misinformation Alert (Score:5, Informative)
Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffet's company. Berkshire Hathaway does not specialize in "estate tax insurance and planning" which is not a "huge part" of their business. Berkshire Hathaway sells all sorts of things including electricity, candy, and insurance. But nobody sells "estate tax insurance" since people can only insure themselves against risks not known liabilities.
Before anybody listens to the parent's allegations of conflict of interest (which he curiously portrays as a phenomenon unique to the Democratic Party) I think it's fair to demand the following evidence:
BTW, I'm really excited to hear that url for estate tax insurance. Gosh, maybe he even sells other tax insurance, like income tax insurance! That would be awesome. Geeze, it seems like I have to pay that one every year.
Wait-a-minute! That's why buffet is supporting Obama's tax hike for the rich: He's going to make a mint selling the income tax insurance! Oh Buffet, you are a wiley one!
Re:Especially with guys like George Soros at the h (Score:4, Informative)
You are arguing that he is for the estate tax because he makes money on estate tax insurance. Sure. I'm sure it is has nothing to do with values about where the tax burden is least harmful. Taxes have to come from somewhere unless you want to just print money or borrow another $trillion from China.
I think the consensus on the bailout bill was that there would be catastrophic consequences for the US economy if the situation was not resolved. Do you have money in the bank (more than the then 100000 FDIC limit - btw the FDIC would go bankrupt pretty quick)? Do companies have money in banks? There was consensus among people who understood the situation that something needed to be done (except maybe Jim Rogers). The representatives risked their own re-election for the good of the public. Maybe it is a conspiracy that both candidates supported the bill and other countries are doing the same thing. Or maybe the average person does not understand our economic system. You decide. BTW I think they are getting ownership of the banks directly instead of buying debt instruments.
Buffett has been for raising the capital gains tax and I think Obama also. That is where he makes most of his money. The other way to get money out of stocks is dividends which is taxed as income. Of course you are not taxed until you sell a stock, but if you don't sell it you never get any money do you?
Business can deduct their expenses. So money used for growth is not included in "income" and is not taxed as your post would imply.
Smart people will profit from whatever the government does. I can understand disagreeing with their ideology, but suggesting that liberal multi-billionaires support raising taxes for their own FINANCIAL benefit seems a little far fetched.
A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of their proposals seem to be based on the idea of some sort of dictator, with everyone's best interests in mind. I'm sure like communism it might work well in theory.
Democracy is basic open source government. You get what you put in. Adding in a republic aspect allows you to have some higher level maintainers to keep things orderly and to occasionally make unpopular decisions for the good of the project. Yes, it's potentially open to corruption, but as long as the democratic process itself isn't corrupted, repairs can be made.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Funny)
Soon, there are so many government distributions, each with their own election managers and schedulers (some completely fair, some not) that nobody knows which government is best for them. They only know it sometimes won't sell wireless and sometimes the open source penal code is not 100% compatible with new versions of the city manager and some people keep getting called 'blobs'.
I'm sure that someday will be the 'year of open source on the government' and one of the distributions will Linspire us to all wear little red hats instead of tin foil. What a Novell idea!
We'll be laughing all the way to the bank about our new, freee government until the judge hits us with patent infringement and says gleefully, "RTFM Noob!" as he issues the kill -9 sentence on us.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
AC wrote: And then along comes some group that disagrees with the project leaders and they fork it. Since the government 0.6.1.1 code is open, they start their own 'republic of Tivo', which makes consumers of government very happy and makes 'the father of open source government' unhappy.
Soon, there are so many government distributions, each with their own election managers and schedulers (some completely fair, some not) that nobody knows which government is best for them. They only know it sometimes won't s
Complete Balkans! (Score:3, Informative)
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the process of breaking up a large country into many smaller ones is often known as "balkanisation". When you do this, you always raise the possibility of trade barriers, and protectionism. these are the single quickest ways to screw up an economy (and to bring down a government). What we need are larger trading areas - with common interests, standards and regulations, not smaller ones.
What big trade needs are larger trading areas with common interests, standards and regulations. What citizens need is smaller trading areas and smaller organizations with less effective power.
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but as long as the democratic process itself isn't corrupted, repairs can be made.
I guess we're fucked then......
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In that case i think the term your looking for is socialist, in particular facist-socialists. where as you would be a liberal-conservative.
Perhaps the problem with the US is that its a country, the amount of power needed to run a country that big inevitably leads to a lot of pressure from special interest groups. There is also a huge discrepancy between how American's think of their federal government (something with limited power over the individual states, like the EU over its countries) and the reality (
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source is a much closer model for no government - or, in other words, anarchy. The last few years have been pretty clear to me that democracy doesn't produce government that works in the people's best interest. A linux model for government would allow people to choose how to organize themselves on a voluntary basis. Government, even the democratic version, rests on the application of force. So the two ideals really are mutually exclusive.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that has much more to do with the fact that people get the government they deserve, rather than failings in democracy per se. Most Americans no longer know, or have any desire to know, economics, civics, how their government works, or even their own history. They then run out and vote like the uneducated idiots they are, voting for whoever "looks most presedential" or "has promised them x" (pretty much whoever schmoozes best or promises most). Americans have been lazy and lately have not placed much priority on these basic educational building blocks, and are now getting the government they deserve. We, as Americans, are largely idiots en masse, so is it any wonder our leaders are all idiots en masse as well? One could argue that our democracy is working exactly as it should be, as it is supposed to be a representative form of government, and it is uncomfortably representative at the moment. In America, when our government starts to suck, we should really turn inward and examine ourselves, because our government is a pretty good mirror reflecting our own failings as individuals.
And as for the whole application of force thing, anarchy will be government by force. Whoever is strongest will come along and either kill you or control you. To use the linux analogy, you will be like a process that voluntarilly used the nice command on itself, and is trying to get along and give other processes their fair share priority. And other not so nice processes will take the CPU, and will choose not to let you run again.
This is why the nice command does nothing in modern unix OS's: if you count on the processes to work together and get organized, some greedy process will come along and spoil it for everyone. Therefore, we now have a scheduler that ignores niceness and uses force to give every process its basic rights.
Force trying to take away rights is always with us. If you don't overcome it with a stronger force that gives rights, you will become its slave.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
If you take any single slice of American history, you will find rancor, stark disagreement, outright corruption and near-militant partisanship. Right now, though, it seems like at least one side may get a full-fledged parliamentary majority: large House majority, filibuster-proof Senate majority, and a president. Even if you disagree with Democrats, you can agree that those most obviously associated with the President - Republicans - are going to be punished for letting him run us into the ground. If Democrats do the same, it'll be Carter to Reagan all over again.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Funny)
Most of their proposals seem to be based on the idea of some sort of dictator, with everyone's best interests in mind.
As a Mac user this sounds strangely familiar [wikipedia.org]
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Only thing being, the U.S. is not a democracy. It's a enfranchised republic.
A true democracy would be something like the annual town meetings held in some places in New England where the entire populace gets together and votes on how they want things to be run over the next year. It's a great concept, and it works on the small scale but it would be far too unwieldy to work for an entire country.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
> Most of their proposals seem to be based on the idea of some sort of dictator, with everyone's best interests in mind.
Of course there are important differences between a project such as Linux and a government.
Linus works as benevolent dictator because:
a) he is a good dictator. Everyone knows a good king is the best form of government, but nobody has ever solved the problem of evsuring a steady supply of good kings.
b) If enough people were to ever decide Linus were a bad dictator that can use the GPL to remove him with a minimum of fuss. In the real world removing a dictator involves a wee bit more effort.
c) Being a highly technical project focused on making the 'best kernel' it is easy to get agreement on most issues since everyone agrees on the meaning of 'best' after a few arguments and benchmark runs. Now consider the socialist/capitalist divide where there is zero agreement as to the definition of a 'good' government. Makes Windows vs Linux a petty squabble.
Not to mention the inescapable fact George Soros is a communist opposed to everything our form of government stands for so anybody who gives that asshole the time of day on the idea of reforming our government should be suspect.
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On the topic of capitalism:
Have you ever noticed how people gasp and look at you strange the moment you mention anarchy?
Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:5, Funny)
Logistics?
If the Dow loses 15% of its value we don't have to figure out where to hide all the lost dollars. Lose 15% of the human population and you either have to find lots of grave space or learn to live with the stench.
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By the same criteria and taking mankind as a whole, who's to say we are not already practising anarchy? - I mean aside from the wrath of your peers and their agents, what's stopping you from doing what you want right now?
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?
Because capitalism is pretty brutal. When a company isn't doing well, it goes bankrupt (unless you count socialist bailouts, but that's not capitalism).
It doesn't work that well when you expand it beyond economics. Under a complete anarchy, if your neighbor likes your big screen TV, but can't afford it? He'll just walk right into your house and take it, there's no police to stop him, no laws to enforce. He spends his free time lifting weights and you're a nerd. He's going to win that battle.
Now you and your nerd friends can agree on a protection pact where you help one another in defense duties. That might work, but everyone will still be in constant battle, looking over their shoulders. That's pretty much like what companies do, keeping on eye on their competitors, making sure they're not stealing all their customers, adapting their business strategy all the time. Not a suitable way to live when everything and not just business needs to be treated that way.
Besides, that little pact you made with your friends to pool together your resources? I imagine you also created a few rules to be part of your group? We won't steal from one another, we'll provide defense services...maybe you've instituted a little tax so you can buy weapons? That's a really small scale government, which you created because anarchy didn't work for you.
Re:A lot of my "liberal" friends seem to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually its just a deregulated economy that only works well in theory well that and the trickle down economy. capitalism works well in practice (or did until the idea that people could just invent money anyway)
Nothing would change... (Score:3, Insightful)
... there would be illicit "code" sharing with interns and staffers, killing of wives and ex-wives. And then there would be religious differences (devil worshippers and penguin followers) and we would be polarized into two parties once again: The Penguins and the Little-Red-Devils.
The more we try to change, the more we stay the same.
And ultimately, who do appoint as our "constitution-kernel" manager to approve any constitution-kernel amendment-patches?
I propose a new driver... a pro-choice driver that does not pass moral judgement over others.
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In USSA, government bailout forks YOU!
Fork. (Score:5, Insightful)
And which one to choose, there are so many! Would it be possible to try each fork on my family first in a sort of LiveGOV program instead of committing to one particular fork of the government?
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There was a serious threat that the government was going to fork. Then they switched to a distributed VCS, everything went better, and world hunger ended.
Until, of course, the next week, when a brand new flamewar erupted on the mailing list.... the mix of politics and free and open source philosophy and development styles... it was just inevitable...
Re:Fork. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the lack of the ability to easily fork may be one of the most deeply ingrained flaws and problems with current political systems. It's a privilege largely reserved for corporations and/or the very rich, to easily change into and out of what political system you currently prefer.
It would be interesting to explore the options of more modular political systems where citizens, when they dislike their unit enough, could reasonably easily disengage and join another unit. A system could be designed on multiple dimensions ranging from geographic protection through healtcare through trade-related aspects, and comprise both low-level units up to world spanning organizations. If nothing else it might at least provide more interesting and intellectually challenging politics.
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Some say its already forked.
Re:Fork. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not just say it's the far right. There are plenty of centrists such as myself who happen to own firearms and hunt would are very wary of Soros. He gives a lot of money to gun control organizations and would strip us of our current rights.
I wouldn't want to live in a country Soros was running.
Open Source IS the ideal behind democracy (Score:2, Interesting)
Man was not meant to rule himself. Some men are natural leaders, but no man is meant to rule.
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Bullshit.
Too Late... (Score:4, Insightful)
We are already about to have a government bought and paid for by Soros
Idiotic (Score:5, Insightful)
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This has been a strong belief amongst geeks for a very long time, if you were around the culture (or visiting Slashdot) during the dot com era you know it was worse then. In summary: I can program a computer to do rocket science, therefore I can do rocket science.
Flip through RMS's writing to see the scope of subjects he was compelled to expound upon and know that before he turned against the hivemind geeks lapped up every single essay like a cat does milk. Dude, if he is smart enough to write The Cathedral
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Which is who I meant....RMS is still a hero to the geek crowd....good call.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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We need term limits and campaign contributions should be anonymous or publicly financed.
terrible idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:terrible idea (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, the OpenBSD model is clearly superior.
Imagine the State of the Union addresses.
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Are you insane?
Then proprietary governments around the world will steal our ideas, improve upon them, and not release them back to us.
We already have governments that operate that way. (Score:2, Insightful)
We already have governments that operate that way, it's called communism.
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And then US is microsoft using its evil proprietary wares to crush any form of communism (even non-evil variants, like the smurfs!!!) . But where does the fascist part of all attempts at communism fit in? I mean linus is a bit of a control freak when it comes to what gets into the kernel, but he is unlikely to shoot you if you fork the kernel (try and break away).
In summary this analogy really sucks!
Well for one thing, it has to be paid for..... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but even now as we pay taxes, we should be telling the government what we want them to spend it on.
This way any election of persons "running' the government can at worse just bias such usage rather then run us into the ground with misusing your taxes and leaving us low and wet with no retirement or healthcare.
Someone said to me, when I suggested we tell the government "for the people by the people" how to spend our taxes, that the constitution of the US says we do not have the right to question how the government spends our taxes.
I agreed and said we will not question them, we will instead tell them how to use it.
The Linux ideal was applied when this country was first started, "for the people by the people" and reason, specific reasons, given is found in the "Declaration of Independence."
As an example of Government Abuse today, if you genuinely uphold the "Declaration of Independence" you WILL BE LABELED A TERRORIST and put of list of such people!
Idealist have great ideas that shouldn't be used (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure that sounds great, but how are you really going to place qualified people into government positions? Open elections? We're having troubles putting competent people into the White House as is, and that's with the assistance of an 'enlightened' electoral college. The USSR tried something similar with Soviets and a Benevolent Dictator but when their economic system collapsed, their government fell too.
The best solution falls along the lines of (1) choosing a government system that is hard to corrupt and
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The politicians treat the Constitution and it's Amendments as if they have to follow a little bit less every year.
I think fundamentally we have an open source government, but it's too heavy at the top. There are too few people with too much power.
This was mentioned as good idea [thirty-thousand.org] and i have to say I kind of like it myself.
they have that in China, Cuba, and elsewhere (Score:2, Insightful)
A "benevolent dictator" is usually not benevolent, except in his own mind. Even if he is, he usually becomes less so over time as pressure builds to show results for society.
You can bet that he will act as a dictator when someone outside his circle proposes changes, though.
Good luck with your job search.
Pffft (Score:3, Interesting)
I do love these money-sharks turned philosophers. Yeah we took a lot of cash from those idiots, but it isn't our fault they are stupid.. What they forget is that I as a non-expert don't have a snowball chance in hell to find out if my pension is in safe hands. Fortis Bank here in Belgium was marketed as a "good housefather - sleep on it for 20 years" share and now it is poof because some fatcat financial "specialists" burned their fingers on something even they didn't understand.
It would have similar flaws to our current Govt. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this seems like a bit of a silly, not well thought out argument. Most discussions of open source that I've been a part of trumpet it as a more "democratic" process, meaning that open source mimics the current US government more than the government should mimic open source.
Now this will likely cause a flood of comments declaring our current government as broken, and not democratic. It is fine if you think that, but if you are going to rant about a problem, you darn well better have a better solution. and if you're thinking of improving the voting process (a good place to start) you may want to check out Arrow's Impossibility Theorem [wikipedia.org] which states that no voting system can possibly be fair to everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Our current government is broken and not democratic!
My solution involves free bacon for everyone. If you love bacon, vote for me in the upcoming election.
See isn't that the way the democratic process is supposed to work?
How long before it became corrupt? (Score:2)
Open Source Govt. (Score:4, Informative)
Any one who has taken a poli sci class or a history class that covered ancient rome, athens or the founding of the US should see that the organization of ideas and resources in order to build a good software product is a vastly different paradigm than organizing a 'good' government.
First, the argument should be about what government means. I'm less concerned with what a government provides me ( a product ) than what it denies me. The moment government thinks it's supposed to produce a product as opposed to leave me alone, I would describe that government as tyrannical.
The bad mortgage/bad credit crisis was in large part created by people who felt it was the government's job to ensure anyone could get a house, regardless of ability to afford it. This is but one example of how government by good intentions invokes the law of unintended consequences for disastrous results.
he's stoned (Score:3, Informative)
might not completely worked (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time we tried to fork the US, it didn't work too well. But actually, I do think that this could be the germ of a new idea, experimental modes of government in test communities. People will argue the pro's and con's back and forth but until the theories have been put to the test, it's just speculation. The only problem I've seen is that when a bad idea is proven to be such in a proper experiment, the true believers won't say the idea was flawed, it simply was not applied with enough vigor. We're thus back where we started, only the true believers are crazier for it.
The thing I keep coming back to is that rigidly hierarchical models of direction and control were necessary in the pre-computer age. Just imagine trying to keep up with documents and records when they're all held on sheets of paper in real folders in real file drawers, just imagine trying to communicate with someone when long-distance communication is just scratchy phone lines and letters. It makes sense to concentrate all of the command and control in one place and issue orders from there, capital cities, corporate HQ's and all.
With modern telecommunications, it will be easier to push the brains of the organization out to the periphery. Just drawing from my own experience, I've worked in several different corporate environments starting with food services, then telecommunications, then a mixture of small and big shops for computers and financial services. The thing that really struck me about the chain stores is that they took away the initiative from the store manager. A place could not vary from corporate standard and while this sets a base line of acceptable quality, nobody was allowed to rise above that level, either. What also happened is that management refused to accept feedback from the stores, the front lines of the business, so when they tried to implement stupid ideas, they never got the feedback that it wasn't working; either they didn't ask for it or wouldn't listen.
Just talking about restaurants, the strength of the traditional franchise is national brand recognition, expensive marketing and research efforts to develop products for the menu, and a proven formula for success that simply needs to be adopted and adhered to. Of course, this also means that you'll often get crap. If I compare the local Denny's with the local breakfast and lunch place, there's no comparison, the local mom and pop kicks the shit out of Denny's and their "real breakfast" bullshit. Of course, Denny's gets huge advantages of scale with purchasing, etc.
What I think would be interesting is if the mom and pops could create co-ops to do the same thing nation-wide. "Look, we're all individuals but together we represent a thousand restaurants. We promise to buy in this quantity at these prices, and if anyone drops out, the rest of the members will pick up the slack." Very hard to do 30 years ago but with computers these days, should be far easier.
When I was a kid, the strength of the capitalist versus communist economies was described as demand versus command. Command economies tried to decide everything from the capital city and they really had no clue how many paperclips were needed, would set unrealistic production goals and would never have the right amount. A demand economy places the paperclip decision at the level of the people buying the paperclips and the people making the paperclips -- a better understanding of the need for paperclips helps limit the production to just as much as is necessary. This decentralizes the bureaucracy.
Can the same thing be done at the federal level? Break the monolithic agencies into smaller "franchises" with the same goal but offices spread throughout the nation, all following the same game plan but fully cognizant of what's going on at the front lines? Can we bring back a meritocracy where the successful succeed and the failures go away? That used to be the strength of the western capitalist economies but now we allow such concentration of resources in oversized companies that are "too big to fail" that we've arrived at the same inefficiencies as the communist nations.
No "good" government (Score:4, Interesting)
In the history of the world, there has never been a "good" government. When things were at their absolute best, the government was mediocre and it didn't last.
The usual quote for this situation is Thomas Paine:
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
I am glad this hedge fund guy is moving to a purely theoretical field. If he can't learn from history, at least he can't hurt the economy with silly financial deals.
Re:No "good" government (Score:5, Insightful)
Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at the
University of Edinburgh) had this to say about 'the fall of
the Athenian Republic' some 2,000 years prior.
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply
cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy
will continue to exist up until the time that voters
discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from
the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates who promise the most
benefits from the public treasury, with the result that
every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal
policy, [which is] always followed by a dictatorship.
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations
from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always progressed
through the following sequence:
'From bondage to spiritual faith;
'From spiritual faith to great courage;
'From courage to liberty;
'From liberty to abundance;
'From abundance to complacency;
'From complacency to apathy;
'From apathy to dependence;
'From dependence back into bondage.
A few thoughts (Score:2)
A few thoughts:
While this is an interesting idea, it seems to me like getting a majority of people (enough to redefine government) to put confidence in a governmental system such as this would be hard. Getting people to understand it, then putting confidence in an untried system, would be difficult. It's like Linux versus mainstream OSes: Linux is being adopted because it's been working in the wings for years as a reasonable alternative in some instances. It has a reputation.
Also, when the Founding Fathers
It's already like Linux (Score:2)
It's inner workings are totally opaque to the general public (me included, for the most part). The fact that is works at all is "magical," in the Asimovian sense.
And for both, if you want answers, you have to ask "The Man!"
Linux in power? (Score:3, Funny)
We would all be ruled by a penguin, but not just any old penguin:
An emperor penguin :)
Under the sea (Score:2, Insightful)
all the current places already have governments. they need a new country for their new government.
I vote they build a city under the sea - somewhere all the existing governments can't get their hands on.
They'll need to bring in all the best scientists, artists, doctors and engineers in as well - I think it'd be important for them to bring in geneticists to help develop new DNA sciences in this new place so that they can build a better, newer world, no?
Already there (Score:2, Funny)
headline typo? (Score:3, Funny)
New governements (Score:3, Interesting)
Direct Democracy (Score:2)
I believe what's called Direct Democracy is like Open Source, citizens can pretty much vote on every issue.
In this day and age it should be easy, if not cheap, to allow every citizen to vote on everything. I know electronic voting has a bad reputation but if the bugs could be worked out (quantum cryptography) this could allow countries with large populations the ability to hear from all citizens.
On the dark side though a true Democracy is probably not a good idea since the majority rules un
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just one funny example to enforce my belief in Representative Democracy as we know it, even in places like Switzerland.
It takes some above average people to take risks in The Peoples name because they can see light where the average man just sees the horizon.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Already on its way.. (Score:2, Informative)
Metagovernment. [metagovernment.org]
The problem is (Score:2)
"best and brightest" != correct
There's a reason why we have incredibly smart people holding differing opinions on nearly every single issue. Joe six pack who has never even read a book might have the "best" idea to solve a problem, even with no idea when the War of 1812 went down. This concept of being right just because you've thought it through is just arrogance. Yes, it probably helps to have an education, but ultimately a lot of decision making is guesswork and judgment calls.
There is an existing model to work from (Score:2)
Stop thinking about systems, think about people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except the people are all under working under a set of rules to achieve something. The system is what puts this into place. If people don't believe in the system(and in turn the rules and goals) they're working for, they will do what they believe is best which might be different than the 'system'.
Extreme example: Capitalism vs Communism. They each have different systems in place to achieve their ends. If the people don't agree with the end goal, doesn't make them necessarily bad or good but they will do t
Already Open Source (Score:2)
The source code is here [cornell.edu].
Broken summary (Score:3, Insightful)
After for once reading the article (very interesting let me tell you) it'd seem that the summary is a bit off course.
Adrew Lahde talks about the need for George Soros (or alike) to fund or start a forum that'd discuss a new form of Goverment/economics, that could grow in the sense of Linux (one guy starts it up, other start contributing).
He does not want Linus or Soros to run a country. He wants people like Soros (anyone with loads of money) to help wise people (not necessarily oil owners) to think about a new world order past capitalism.
He also talks about number of different good ideas which should be put in play.
The solution is so simple that it hurts... (Score:5, Interesting)
All "modern" government systems (democracy, communism, you name it), or in fact, all government systems until now, had one giant elephant of a problem sitting right there in the middle of the room:
There are humans governing others.
Now continue to read before you judge.
The problem behind this is, that those people have a conflict of interest, between the needs of the governed and their own interests. So the ideal leader would be someone, where those two match perfectly.... which is of course impossible. But you can approximate it.
The problem with this is, that we have no reliable way of selecting such a person. Mostly because normal people can be tricked pretty easily.
But there is one new solution, that just came up when computers and the Internet got available everywhere:
Do not use an humans, but a very simple mathematical model (one that is so simple that every educated human can check it for himself), that calculates descisions out of the votes of a model of cascading trust relationships. This sounds complicated but it's very simple. (If you know how CSS decides, what rules apply to a HTML element, you already know it.)
In reality, it would work like this:
There is a set of things, where a decision has to be taken. That set is defined by people having differences in these points. Now someone - the typical role, that a politician would fill today - can create decisions for that set. Then another one can say "I want what he wants.... but, i want this specific thing to be different". Of course someone can use the results of that as his base too. And you can combine partial sets too, as you like. For example, you could say "I'm a liberal, but I agree with person X on family matters and person Y on science matters. oh, and I want social skills to be taught in school."
That way you could form a nice set of your own views without voting for every shit out there. (Because, it should make your life better, not worse :)
Now of course, this does not mean that you can get everything you want... because you live in a community.
So you assign yourself to a community/communities (country, state, town) (those are cascading too, and you can define which one has priority over which), and your views will merge with those of the community, to create the rules for that group of people.
So a conflict of interest would not be possible, because you could change your set of rules at any time.
Now there would of course be one simple limitation: You have to be in the same group with people that you share resources (land, water, jobs) with, when it comes to that matter (land, water, jobs). This could be automatically solved via a GPS input (or something similar).
I think that would work great. You could even extensively test it in parallel to the current system, round out all problems, and if it works, you can simply let all people join that system by themselves, until the old government does not matter anymore and goes away. So there is also no need for a "transient" government, like in communism, which for some reason never seems to end its job of transition (again a conflict of interest).
This idea of mine is open and I do not care who implements it, as long as you do not create a slightly modified system that becomes evil, and still associate it with me!
Who governs who? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can appreciate certain periods , even recent, of US government.
Talking about the USofA, the majority of it's people will probably support the idea of a Capitalist economy thriving under a Democratically elected government.
The problems of recent are in my view caused by Capitalism ruling the government instead of the other way around.
Democracy will get damaged when special interests are able to significantly buy votes.
I've said it before, here in and in other places, the US needs to ban any financial contributions to political parties in the widest sense by non voters.
And voters should be limited to say a US$ 20.- contribution per year on a party.
Even the poorest voters could afford such a payment and thus the one-man one-vote democracy would be restored.
If a majority of voters decided the parties need more money to operate successful they could allow tax money to be used, many countries have come up with reasonable systems to fund the running of party bureaucracies without distorting the democratic balances.
Until then (especially in the US) the Democratic process is being diverted by funny money instead of votes.
Rapture (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me guess, since all land is already occupied by existing governments it would make sense to build a city underwater, somewhere in international waters, how does the mid-Atlantic seabed sound?